Mom-Blog Writing Workshop, Session 10: 5 Life-Writing Tips

Hello, friends! For the past 10 months, we’ve been exploring various aspects of blog writing and “mom blogging,” as part of this blog Maternity Ward’s yearlong Mom-Blog Writing Workshop. Many mama bloggers among us share posts about their daily lives and daily journeys … and so today, let’s learn more about this genre of “life writing.”

I hope that these five resources related to life writing will help you in your mom-blog writing!

You may enjoy this article from the website, entitled “10 Reasons to Write About Your Life.” Some of the reasons include, “To leave a record for your family.” “To explore and make sense of your life.” “To shed new light and heal old hurts.”

2: Free Life Writing Class, from Steve Barnes — According to the website, “What follows is, in slightly modified form, the complete text of the 9-week writing class I’ve taught for years at UCLA. To my knowledge it is the only completely free program of its depth and scope available on the WWW.”

Here is an interesting quote from the Week One class. This quote speaks to commercially successful life writing, in the form of fictional movie scripts: “Directors like Steven Spielberg have an awesomely developed instinct for what the public wants. On the one hand, he makes a product to please himself, and to hell with the rest of the world. On the other hand, he loves sneaking into movie theaters to watch his films with a live audience. He listens to what they react to, and how they react. He is attuning his cinematic antennae.”

4: Po Bronson’s Advice to Writers — I love Po Bronson’s writing. And I love this tidbit of his, regarding the business of writing: “It takes an average of ten years dedication before you can make a living writing creatively full time.”

5: Last but not least, some notable quotables …

“That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can’t control life, at least you can control your version.” —Chuck Palaniuk

“In order to write about life first you must live it.” —Ernest Hemingway